


live and live again

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2016 [5]
Category: Highlander: The Series, The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: All fun stuff, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Fusion, Gen, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Immortality, Male Friendship, Methos Cameo, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fic, Some Temporary Character Death, Wild West, Wishlist Fic, really - Freeform, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 03:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which Red Harvest dies and lives and lives and lives.(Wishlist,  Day 5)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For tigriswolf, who asked for Mag7/Highlander, with a Methos cameo. Ask and ye shall receive. I hope you like it!
> 
> Additional A/N: I tried to avoid weird pop culture stereotypes concerning Native American culture, but I might have fucked up. If so, tell me, so I can fix it?

+

When Red Harvest is twenty-three summers old, he goes Buffalo hunting with the other men and dies. 

(Not that he knows it at the time.)

He makes a mistake, a silly mistake, and it gets him trapped between the stampeding animals and a rock formation. Gets him trampled. 

It’s a painful way to go. 

He wakes sometime later, aching all over, bloody, but without wounds. Confused but glad to not be dead, he heads toward where the others are already working over the animals that will keep their entire tribe fed through the winter. They ask him where he was, but he just shakes his head, accepts a knife from a friend and gets to stripping the nearest carcass.

(He lives.)

+

Later he tells his grandfather, who is one of the tribe’s elders, and the man nods along with Red’s confusion over waking without wounds. Even the ache has gone by now. 

“I see,” his grandfather says.

“What happened to me?”

“We hoped this was not your path, but we were warned that it might be.” His grandfather nods again, then excuses himself to talk with the other elders. 

Red is left behind, feeling even more confused than before. 

+

The white man comes a moon later. 

He wears layers against the early winter chill and rides a horse as temperamental as a storm, weighted down with all kinds of goods, which the man peddles wherever he goes. 

Red has known the man for a long time, because he comes, certain as the dawn, twice a year: once in spring, and once when the summer dies, bringing news, furs, nails, beads, all kinds of white people things. Useful things. He trades fairly with the Comanche, unlike most other white men coming through and he always makes time to find Red and ask him how he’s doing. Every single time, since before Red was old enough to carry a warrior’s weapons.

Which, thinking on it now, cannot be possible. The man they call Wanderer is hardly ten summers older than Red Harvest, but he remembers him from earliest childhood on. A relative, then, a father, maybe. A man with the same coloring, wearing the same title. 

That is all. 

But this time, this time the man comes in winter, only months after his last visit, and when he enters the village, a shudder runs down Red’s spine, like in the coldest of nights, a shudder that goes all the way to his bones. 

The red-haired man turns his gaze unerringly on Red, where he’s standing, half-hidden by the horses, and sighs. 

+

The Wanderer, his grandfather tells him that night, truly has been around since Red Harvest was a boy. Has been around since his father was a boy. 

The Wanderer cannot die. 

And neither can Red Harvest.

The man in question, sitting next to Grandfather, sighs again. “The very first time I saw you, I knew you could be like me, kid. But there was a chance you could have grown old, died in peace, or caught one of the white man diseases going ‘round. Gone that way. You would have stayed dead then.” He shakes his head, sips from his flask, which smells acidic of white man poison. “But you had to go and get trampled by damn buffalos. Ugly way to die.”

“I died?”

“You died. And you will die again, but you will never stay that way. Not unless someone takes your head.”

+

The Wanderer stays with them that winter, and the year after that, and the year after that. He stays until he has taught Red all he needs to know, and then he takes back to the road, the way he has for over a hundred and fifty years, crossing from wilderness to settlements, from settlements to villages, from villages to wilderness, back and forth, never stopping and never aging.

+

The next time he comes, they greet each other like old friends and the one after and the one after that. 

Red’s grandfather dies. 

And then his father dies. 

The next time the Wanderer comes, Red greets him like an old friend. And when he leaves, Red rides at his side. 

+

They travel together for a while, seasons, years, split, reunite when the world grows too big and lonely for them. They chase each other like sun chases moon, lose each other and find each other again, a slower, more worn version of the hiding game Red Harvest played as a child in a village that only exists in his memories, now. 

One summer, Red meets another one of their kind, a woman with yellow hair and blue eyes. She tries to kill him, so he kills her first, takes her head and her life and then buries her in the way of the white people, ashamed and afraid and proud, his very blood singing with the lightning he stole from her.

He was a killer before, but never a life thief. 

“Unlucky son of a bitch,” the Wanderer, who calls himself something else these days, remarks when Red tells him. “Only a handful of us spread out across this entire continent, and you find one of the greedy ones.”

Shaking his head, he offers Red his flask in consolation. Red drinks, hisses at the burn, and closes his eyes. 

+

He goes back to his tribe, then, for a while, to that village that is barely familiar and the people who have almost forgotten his face. His brother’s daughter’s husband in chieftain now, and she remembers him, the tales of him and the red-haired man, the two deathless men.

He stays with them until his niece dies in childbed, her sixth son with her. 

The Wanderer stopped coming through decades ago.

+

The next time they see each other briefly, they are on opposing sides of a fight. The Wanderer is called Faraday by his companions, wears white people garb and more weapons than the sword and dagger he used to carry.

He smiles at Red across the heads of their fighting comrades, grim and hard. 

They both die, that day, and when they revive, they are the only ones. 

They bury their dead together, some under the earth, some under the sky, and then, awkwardly, part ways again.

+

The second time he meets another deathless one, it’s a man, tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and a proud nose. He hunches his shoulders, makes himself small, but his eyes, hidden by small spectacles, remind Red Harvest of the mountain lions found in the north, fierce and deadly. 

He says he is a doctor, wears a dusty suit and smiles too much, pretends to be nervous. His hands are steady, though. 

“Do we fight?” Red asks, in English. One hand is on his hatchet, the other on his dagger, a gift from his teacher. A sword was never for him, and this knife was their compromise. It has saved his life once already.

He waits.

The man studies him slowly, then, after a long moment, shakes his head. “I would rather prefer not to, if it’s all the same to you, sir.”

His hands remain in his pockets, where he put them when he saw Red studying them. His stance is relaxed. Red lets go of his weapons and the doctor squints at the dagger’s hilt. 

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispers, less polite now, less fearful. Red wonders how many people are actually deceived by this man’s mask. “Where did you get that weapon, boy?”

“My teacher.”

“About as tall as me, red hair, the devil in him?”

Red inclines his head in agreement. He knows little about the white god, but he understands the man’s meaning well enough. Suddenly, the other man laughs, too loud, his eyes impossibly dark, impossibly _old_. “Say hello to the boy for me, next you see him, will you?”

Red doesn’t make camp as he intended, that night, but rides until dawn, eager to get away from that jovial man and his ancient, cold eyes. 

(He has seen enough of the world to know Death when he meets him.)

+

Five years later, six, ten, he catches the sizzle of his friend down his spine and follows it into a canyon, where a man called Sam Chisolm convinces him to ride with them.

Faraday watches from a distance, a sloppy grin on his face, more like the friend Red knew, cheerful and unpredictably amused by the world, than the hard, bloodied man he met on a battle field a few years ago.

Once Chisolm has retreated, Faraday holsters his weapons and ambles over, his grin growing into a wide smile as he hugs Red, rubbing along the shaved portion of his scalp. 

“Good to see you,” he comments, in Red’s native tongue, laughter in his voice. “Thought I could feel you there, kid.”

Red claps him on both shoulders and looks him in the eye. Makes sure that his friend is looking out of them, not another, darker man. Finds what he is looking for and nods, “Hello, old friend,” he finally says.

“So,” a man in black comments, his English as accented as Red’s own, “you two know each other, si?”

Faraday shrugs. “We used to ride together, back in the day.”

Red just inclines his head at the man in greeting, curious about the shiver down his spine.

+

“Is he like us?” he asks that night, when the rest of the camp is already asleep.

Faraday shakes his head around a sip of whiskey, passes along his flask.

“Not yet. He’s like you were, before the damn buffalos.”

Red rolls his eyes, because he got over his death a long time ago, but his teacher never quite seemed to. 

“Could go either way,” Faraday adds, then snorts, “Although, considering where we’re headed and the sizable bounty on his head, possibly not.”

It’s amusing, in its way. Of the seven of them, two are deathless and one will probably be shortly, considering what they are about to go to war against. 

What are the chances?

“I’ll drink to that,” Faraday remarks, and empties his flask with a few short swallows. 

Red chuckles. This new version of the Wanderer drinks to anything. 

+

Red dies twice during the battle, revives quicker than usual each time, as if even his body knows the urgency. 

The first time he goes down distracting Denali from Horne, arrow piercing his shoulder. 

The second time is covering Faraday as he rides for the Gatling, gunned down in retaliation. 

He wakes again minutes later to a ringing silence, heaves his aching body upright and starts a slow limp toward where his friend blew up the big gun, finds him bloody, burnt and ruined. 

He isn’t waking. 

He isn’t healing. 

The only reassurance Red has is that his head is yet attached. 

“Lo siento,” a voice says behind him, deep and full of sorrow and Red doesn’t need to speak Vasquez’ tongue to know what the man is saying as he puts a hand on Red’s shoulder and squeezes. It sends a spark down his spine, a pathetic imitation of the sensation Faraday evokes, lightning and fire.

Shaking his head, Red starts folding Faraday’s limbs into more comfortable positions, starts trying to find places where the skin is not burnt. He knows the other man won’t feel it, but he doesn’t want to cause him more injury. 

“No,” he says. “He will heal.”

“He’s gone, amigo. No help for him, anymore.”

“No. Not gone. Help me.”

Jack is there, suddenly, whinnying lowly, nudging first Faraday and then Red. Offering help. Spirits, but Red adores that beast. 

He heaves Faraday’s still form over the horse’s back, and starts toward what remains of Rose Creek, still burning in places. The survivors are gathering in the street, wide-eyed with relief. Red finds his own mare, finds Sam and Emma. Nods his goodbyes to them, even as Emma clutches a hand to her mouth, tears on her face at the sight of Faraday’s body. 

From next to her, the holy man speaks up. “We will take care of Mr. Faraday, if you will allow it. He will be treated well.”

Red shakes his head.

Sam reaches out, says his name.

“No,” he interrupts. 

“He should be buried in the ways of his own people, Red.”

Red shakes his head. “Your god is not his god,” he refutes, because he has heard the older man pray, has heard him invoke the names of gods no Christian tongue has ever spoken. 

In the end they let him go because they cannot hold him and Red urges both horses into a gallop as soon as he is out of sight, intending to be far from this place when Faraday returns to the living world. 

He rides until dusk, then makes camp in a small copse of trees, near enough to a brook to clean out his friend’s wounds. Once the other man is as comfortable as he can make him, Red starts to mend what can be salvaged of his clothing. 

+

Vasquez joins him as he finishes patching up the third hole, his presence a flicker at the edge of Red’s mind that has been coming and going all day as the other man followed them.

“What are you doing, amigo?” he asks, pointing at the corpse across the campfire, disgust and fear warring with something akin to hope in his gaze. 

Red didn’t know Faraday and Vasquez even liked each other, constantly snapping at the other the way they were.

Without stopping his mending, he orders, “Wait.”

Vasquez opens his mouth, closes it, mutters, swears, crosses himself and then settles in.

They wait.

+

It takes until dawn for Faraday to find his way back and when he does, he sits up with a cough and a heave before rolling over and throwing up blood, bile and half a dozen small, round pieces of metal.

Then he wipes his mouth, utters a heartfelt curse and turns toward Red. “I fucking hate getting blown up.”

Red pats him on one bare shoulder consolingly and offers him his mended shirt back.

Vasquez stares.

+

In the end, they tell the mortal man only what they are, not what he could be, and when they saddle up a few hours later, intending to get away from civilization for a while, lest they cross paths with anyone from Rose Creek, Vasquez follows them. 

It’s comfortable, between the three of them, so Red sees no point in arguing. 

+

“I met a man,” he tells Faraday, months later, holed up in an empty cabin to wait out the storm season. “Like us. He said to tell to you hello.”

Faraday (he says he won’t change his name until they head back to where people are) frowns. “How did he know to do that, pray tell?”

“He recognized my knife,” Red explains, describes the meeting, the man, the words spoken. 

For a moment, Faraday stares. Then, abruptly, he breaks into startled laughter loud enough to wake Vasquez. “I’ll be damned. I thought for sure the old man had forgotten about me, by now. It’s been…,” he stops, considering. 

“He is old, yes?” Red asks, 

Faraday nods. “He was ancient when I was born. To be honest, I think he might be the oldest thing in this world.”

“How old are you?” Vasquez asks, sitting up from his bedroll, sleep-faced. 

After having tried to find an answer to that question for a century, Red shakes his head, chuckling. 

Faraday just grins and hooks a thumb toward him. “Younger than the old man, older than this one.”

“Not helpful, guero.”

As the two fall into their usual banter, Red leans back, considers the eyes of the man who called himself a doctor, the endless miles he’s spent wandering with the man next to him, the years since he saw his village, since the last of his family forgot his face. He considers the man across the room, still aging, still dying a little every day, and all he might become. 

All the things the three of them might do, and see, yet. 

They will ride out, come spring, will move from wilderness to civilization and back again, as they always have, teach Vasquez their ways and wait for him to either die or become deathless.

They will watch as the last buffalos disappear from the planes where Red Harvest once died his first death, will watch the country sliced to pieces by railroads and cities and highways, will watch the world shrink and the universe grow. 

They will return to Rose Creek and find vaguely familiar names on crooked, rotting tombstones, will find bullets in a field beyond the town’s limits, old and spent and rusting long after everyone alive has forgotten what happened there. 

They’ll get drunk and toast a woman called Emma Cullen, and the band of misfits she gathered, long ago. 

And they’ll live. 

More than anything, they’ll live. 

+

**Author's Note:**

> Come tumble with me [here](http://www.wordsformurder.tumblr.com/).


End file.
